


write your name in letters of smoke, among the stars of the south

by AureliaAstralis



Series: a sky full of stars, what a heavenly view [1]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Greek Mythology, Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Constellations, F/M, Gen, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-30
Updated: 2014-12-30
Packaged: 2018-03-04 06:52:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,355
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2956454
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AureliaAstralis/pseuds/AureliaAstralis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On the rare nights when he craved something <i>more</i>, he let himself catch glimpses of a girlish, freckled face with delicate features, and woke bleary-eyed to the phantom sensation of silky skin beneath his tongue and a name falling from his lips. </p><p>She could recall the sound of his laughter, the feel of his hands, his lips – and it was all so real that she had to force herself to stop hoping, and wishing, and <i>wanting.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	write your name in letters of smoke, among the stars of the south

**Author's Note:**

> What happens when you take the soulmate trope, add a semester of Intro to Astronomy and a childhood love for mythology?

Tony couldn’t remember the last time he remembered his dreams. Since childhood, he woke from fleeting bursts of sound and smell and blurry color – and more often than not jolted awake chasing the memory of pomegranate-red hair, until even that seemed to just vanish into blankness.

Over the course of years, he held onto what he could – snippets and snapshots of the tart taste of sharp olives, the smoky scent of incense and charcoal, that damned flash of red hair – and then one day he woke with a gasp, words still ringing in his ears as Obadiah shook his shoulder, a grim look on his face.

 _"Hail Erichthonius_ _,"_  a sea of voices echoed, the chanting fading as he rubbed the sleep from his eyes, " _Erichthonius_ _, king of Athens_."

The name, too odd and foreign for him to even spell, was forgotten quickly in his grief.

He stopped dreaming after receiving the news of his parents’ deaths, nightmares of their car accident plaguing his mind instead. Months later, when he began waking up to the smells of fresh linen and the feel of a hot forge fire against his face, he turned to his lab and alcohol and women to keep dreams at bay. 

On the rare nights when he craved something  _more_ , he let himself catch glimpses of a girlish, freckled face with delicate features, and woke bleary-eyed to the phantom sensation of silky skin beneath his tongue and a name falling from his lips. 

 _Ariadne_. Unlike before, the name sat in the forefront of his mind, through the days and through half-suppressed dreams.

He sounded out the name, familiar and lovely in a way that made his chest tighten, and when he buried himself in myths and books he realized the odd birthmark on left pectoral was more than just a birthmark. On bad days the name brought him both comfort and a dose of loneliness and sorrow, but for what reason he couldn’t figure out.

When he finally just  _let_  himself dream, it wasn’t hard to piece together the rest – memories of a crippled inventor-king, who built a gilded chariot drawn by mechanical horses –  _his_  memories, once, from an age long before he was Tony Stark. But when it came to Ariadne – wife of a god, princess of Crete – and the constellation-crown she wore, splayed across his chest, nothing made sense.

And then a slim young woman with that same pomegranate-red hair walked into his office one morning, a pentagon of starbursts and lines bold against the pale skin of her forearm, and he couldn’t stop himself from reaching past the papers in her hands and touching it.

She gasped, and he watched, mesmerized, as the black bled away into shimmering pinpricks of gold.

_“_ _Ariadne?”_

_"... sorry? My name is Virginia."_

* * *

As a child, Virginia didn’t think much about the weird shape on her arm, nearly indiscernible against the sea of freckles that covered every inch of her skin. She used go to class with lines and swirls drawn up and down her arms, playing connect-the-dots with her skin and a stolen marker on the bus rides to school.

Every day, without fail, she was sent to the bathroom to scrub the ink off her arms. And she did, reluctantly, but was secretly glad when no amount of soap and water could make those few lines and dots fade away. There was something comforting about it, a warm hum that spread from her fingers and her toes when she touched it, something that made her stand up straighter and taller. 

Time passed – elementary, middle school, high school – and not much changed, except that while nearly all her freckles faded away, that little cluster of dark markings remained behind.

At the beginning of freshman year she snuck a pack of fine-tipped art pens into her basket when shopping for school supplies with her mother, and started a phase of long sleeves and arm warmers to hide her doodles from disapproving teachers. She didn’t bother washing off the ink during her after-school volleyball practices, or even during games, and it didn’t really register until her mother confronted her about the rumors of her supposed tattoo sleeves. She showed up to school for a week straight after that, arms bare and clean, save for the little, lopsided pentagon that remained behind.

For the next few years, she got some snide comments about the marks, whispers about how she drew the lines in every morning or that it was a tattoo from a drunken escapade during the summer. She paid it all little attention, focus drawn on her schoolwork and volleyball, and all else was easily ignored in the face of the dreams that began to come to her at night – moments like the smell of salt in the wind, the dry heat on her bared shoulders, or, her favorite, laughing brown eyes staring up at her in affection.

When she went off to college, people still noticed, but she was baffled when they actually  _liked_  the mark, complimenting her on the fine linework and asking where she’d gotten it done. No amount of denial could make anyone believe it was anything other than a tattoo, so she just shrugged and smiled when people pointed it out. 

 _“It looks like a constellation,”_  a friend of hers, who knew the whole story, mused one day, and Virginia squinted down at the shape. She’d wondered, for a long time, if it meant anything, but had written it off as just a random birthmark. But maybe…  _“Ask one of the Classics majors, I’d bet they’d know.”_

She mustered up the courage to ask the head of the Classics department mere hours before her graduation ceremony, and the man had cocked his head to the side in interest when he saw it.

 _“I’m not so well-versed in astronomy, but it looks like Auriga,”_  he said, and at her frown of confusion he clarified,  _“It’s Latin for the word charioteer; Greek mythology says the gods took the inventor of the chariot and placed his invention amongst the stars – Erichthonius, I think he was called.”_

 _Erichthonius._  She walked across the graduation stage in a daze, the sound of applause and congratulations fading into the background as both her heart and mark tingled at the sound of the name. When she finally found herself alone, sitting in bed and staring at the blank wall, she let herself say his name, her mouth forming the syllables with an oddly familiar ease.

It was like a dam broke, and she spent weeks,  _months,_  trying to wade through blurry dreams of a man in a white  _chiton_ , bearing a purple cloak and a crown of gold-covered laurels, driving a chariot drawn by mechanized copper horses. She could recall the sound of his laughter, the feel of his hands, his lips – and it was all so real that she had to force herself to stop hoping, and wishing, and  _wanting_.

And then she met  _him_ , staring at her with wide eyes and desperation clinging to the edges of his arrogant smile, before he crowded up against her and touched the constellation on her arm, and it was like something exploded behind her vision, and beneath every point of her skin. She couldn’t help the gasp that escaped when she looked down to see that mark, the one that’d always been dark and black, now shining as if a light-bulb had been buried within her skin and was threatening to crawl out.

 _“Ariadne?”_  She jerked at the name, something in her brain sliding into place even as she responded.

_"... sorry? My name is Virginia."_

She stepped back with the most professional smile she could muster, laying out the files and papers on Tony Stark’s desk and going off on a ramble about miscalculated numbers and profit losses as he just kept looking at her with a poorly-masked expression of astonishment.

 _Ariadne_. She wondered though, if that could be her. 

* * *

**“Who writes your name in letters of smoke, among the stars of the south?**  
 **Oh let me remember you - as you were, before you existed.”**    
\- Pablo Neruda,  _Every Day You Play_

 

**Author's Note:**

>  **Auriga** is one of the 48 constellations listed by the 2nd-century astronomer Ptolemy and remains one of the 88 modern constellations. Located north of the celestial equator, its name is the Latin word for "charioteer", associating it with various mythological charioteers, including Erichthonius, a legendary early ruler of ancient Athens, Greece. 
> 
> **Corona Borealis** is a small constellation in the Northern Celestial Hemisphere. Its Latin name means "northern crown", and is one of the 48 constellations listed by the 2nd-century astronomer Ptolemy, it remains one of the 88 modern constellations. In Greek mythology, Corona Borealis represented a crown that was given by Dionysus to Ariadne, the daughter of Minos of Crete.


End file.
